FROM the lobby of this building to the dryer of the Bay Terrace hair salon, Americans – divided by ethnicity and income, at odds over politics, religion and parking spaces – have united over a common sentiment: Thank goodness Ben rid himself of Jen.

Like few boy-girl pairings before it – Charles and Camilla, Sharon Stone and that hairy Bronstein fellow, Bruce Springsteen and his starter starlet wife – the Ben-Lo matchup bore the power to induce indigestion in presumably star-resistant citizens.

Call me sexist if you will. But your mother feels the same way.

Jen’s aging sex-kitten act, like that of her elder alter ego, Madonna, or perhaps the struggling would-be sex goddess Kerry Kennedy, provoked a profound sense of unease among more than a few women as well as men.

Her desperation to make herself an honest woman by publicly snagging a “catch” was always self-centered and sad. Worse, it was bound to degrade the man in the picture, who looked like a hapless bystander in a female midlife emergency.

Face it. They were never any good for each other.

Individually, each element of the two-headed creature referred to collectively as “Bennifer” was capable of causing irritation. She was spoiled. He couldn’t commit. But together, the duo brought into sharp focus the dowdiest, scuzziest aspects of each of their personas.

With her inability to fully dress herself, you might think of Jennifer as Pamela Anderson with a singing voice. But under Ben’s gaze, protesting in an interview that her squeeze “wears the pants,” Jen was pathetic. Monica Lewinsky meets “Baywatch.”

Before Jen, Affleck appeared boyish, unformed. Harrison-Ford-in-training. But as soon as Jen dressed him in big-boy suits, he looked slightly creepy. Not Harrison Ford. Tennessee Ernie Ford, maybe.

At 33, Jen already has two eye-blink marriages under her belt. The last one, to sweet dancer Cris Judd, she apparently embarked upon as a ploy to lose the stench of her union with rapper and firearms enthusiast Puff Daddy.

To a scratched-and-dented diva with skid marks on her bedpost, Ben Affleck must have looked like her last shot at respect, if not redemption.

Affleck, on the other hand, had nowhere to go but down.

So he bolted. But not before humiliating Jen with those strippers – a clear sign he was looking for the exit door to this train-wreck romance.